“Here,” said Hwa-jung, placing the machine on the short countertop next to the sink. “You need this.”

“What is it?” said Sparrow, cracking open her eyes.

“A humidifier. The air is too dry in here.”

Vishal examined the machine with a degree of doubt. “The air here is the same as—”

“Too dry,” Hwa-jung insisted. “It is bad for her. It makes you sick. The humidity needs to be higher.”

Sparrow smiled slightly. “You ain’t going to win this argument, Doc.”

Vishal seemed as if he was going to protest for a moment, and then he raised his hands and backed off. “As you wish, Ms. Song. It’s not as if I work here.”

Kira went over to him and, in a low voice, said, “Do you have a moment?”

The doctor bobbed his head. “For you, Ms. Navárez, of course. What seems to be the problem?”

Kira glanced at the other two women, but they seemed busy talking with each other. Lowering her voice further, she said, “My stomach has been hurting. I don’t know if it’s something I ate, or…” She trailed off, not wanting to give voice to the worst possibilities.

Vishal’s expression sharpened. “What did you have for breakfast?”

“I haven’t eaten yet.”

“Ah. Very well. Please stand over here, Ms. Navárez, and I will see what I can do.”

Kira stood in a corner of the sickbay, feeling slightly embarrassed to have Sparrow and Hwa-jung watching while the doctor listened to her chest with a stethoscope and then pressed against her belly with his hands. “Does it hurt here?” he asked, touching just below her rib cage.

“No.”

His hands moved a few centimeters lower. “Here?”

She shook her head.

His hands moved lower still. “Here?”

The sharp intake of her breath was answer enough. “Yeah,” she said, her voice tight with pain.

A furrow appeared between Vishal’s brows. “One minute, Ms. Navárez.” He pulled open a nearby drawer and rummaged through it.

“Call me Kira, please.”

“Ah, yes. Of course. Ms. Kira.”

“No, I mean … Never mind.”

Across the room, Sparrow popped her gum. “You’ll never get him to unbend. The doc here is as stiff as a rod of titanium.”

Vishal muttered something in a language Kira didn’t understand, and then he returned to her with an odd-looking device. “Please lay on the floor and unseal your jumpsuit. Not all the way; halfway will do.”

The deck was rough against her back. She held still while he spread cold goo across her lower stomach. A sonogram, then.

The doctor chewed on the inside of his lip while he studied the feed from the sonogram on his overlays.

Kira expected an answer of some kind when Vishal finished, but instead he held up a finger and said, “It is needful to do a blood test, Ms. Kira. Would you please remove the Soft Blade from your arm?”

That’s not good. Again, Kira followed his orders, trying to ignore the worm of unease turning in her gut. Or maybe it was just the pain from whatever was wrong inside her.